


Bad Places

by Tashilover



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Fake Character Death, Gore, horror themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:30:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tashilover/pseuds/Tashilover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting into Wonderland is easy. Getting out however...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Places

 

When Martin woke up, he laid in a puddle of blood.

Disorientation robbed any panic he might have had at that moment. He was on his stomach, his head to the side. He blinked and pushed himself up, feeling the blood stretch and drip off of him. He barely registered the whole right side of his face was wet, as well as a good portion of his torso.

He leaned back on his knees, slouching, sighing tiredly. He raised his hand to scratch at his cheek, his fingers finally coming into contact with the blood. Martin pulled his hand away, staring at his red digits.

Realization came slowly.

"Oh my god," he breathed. He noticed the blood on the ground, on his chest. "Oh my god!"

He pulled back his cuffs to see his wrists, then pulled his shirt up to check his chest. After a quick thorough examination, he found no wounds, no open arteries. The blood wasn't his.

He checked his pockets, searching for his phone. He didn't find it. Grimacing at his stained hands, he wiped them on the clean portion of his jacket. It was ruined anyways.

Martin quickly got to his feet, swaying at the sudden head rush. He checked his cranium for bumps and injuries and found none.

He was in MJN's office and it looked as if it had been ransacked.

No, not ransacked,  _destroyed_. Desks and tables had been flipped over and smashed into large wooden pieces. The wall chart had been torn down, blood splattered over the front, and even little things like the coffee maker and photographs on the walls were broken and shattered.

Martin rubbed at his eyes, wondering if this was all a dream. He couldn't believe it. Who would do such a thing? He picked up a picture frame, careful not to cut his fingers on the glass and looked at it.

The photo consisted of Martin, Douglas, Arthur and Carolyn, all standing in front of Gerti. Someone had scratched out their faces.

Martin dropped the frame. There were dried dead leaves and bits of unknown debris scattered all along the floor. If anything, the MJN office looked like it had been abandoned for years.

This had to be some sort of sick practical joke. Except Douglas would never be so cruel to pull such a stunt and Carolyn would have never allowed it to happen.

After a quick search of the personal lockers, Martin found nothing worth bringing along. No phones, no radio, no spare clothes. There had been something written in Arthur's locker, indented into the metal and it took Martin some clever maneuvering of his head to peer at it well enough to read it.

_Help me, mummy, I'm so scared._

Martin took a step back, greatly disturbed. It didn't looked like Arthur's handwriting but Martin closed the locker door regardless.

It wasn't just the office. As Martin cautiously wandered out into the hall, everything was in shambles. The carpet was stained, burnt in some places. The walls were scratched, the wallpaper ripped, the windows either shattered or completely blown out. There were a few splattered marks that suggested blood but Martin made no effort to check closer.

"Hello?" He called out into the silence a few times. "Hello, is anyone there?"

For the next twenty minutes he wandered around the airport, trying desperately to find some semblance of life. Discarded, water logged magazines gave him no information. Most of the electronics he found in gift shops refused to turn on and those that did only sputtered back to life for a brief few seconds and died.

He was able to salvage two water bottles, a few small bags of sweets and a small un-torn plastic bag to carry them in. He was tempted to wash his hands to rid of the last bits of red off his fingers and resisted. He didn't want to waste water.

Martin was not a fan of horror films and now he wondered if he was in one. There were no bodies, no skeletons, nothing to indicate the violence that apparently took place here. Even as Martin looked outside, the planes too were dilapidated, the runways unkept with overgrowing grass.

Maybe there had been an attack. Maybe Martin was hallucinating.

After a half-hour of wandering around the empty airport, Martin decided it was time to leave. It was best to get outside, find a car and... and... go from there. he didn't want to think what he would do next if the world outside the airport was like this.

Martin headed for the exit, making sure to walk in the middle to avoid getting surprised by corners. Up ahead, he saw the familiar "Welcome to Fitton!" sign. There was something covering a portion of the sign and at this distance, Martin couldn't tell what it was.

He stopped in his tracks. It was a body.

He could be wrong, he was too far away to be sure, but the outline looked like a human body  _hanging_  from the sign. Whoever he was, his arms were spread out in a crucifix form.

Martin hesitated. He took a step back, thinking to get out from another exit.

 _But_  if that really was a body, he should see who it was. Try and find clues of what was going on.

Swallowing his fear, Martin stepped forward.

With every step, his fear grew. More and more details came into view of the body. It was a man with grey hair. He was wearing a blue uniform, a very familiar blue uniform. In fact, Martin could see three gold lines on the cuffs of the jacket-

"Oh god," Martin moaned. He dropped his bag of water and rushed forward. "Oh god, Douglas! Douglas!"

It was Douglas. The front of his shirt had been ripped opened, exposing his torso. A gigantic slash ran horizontaly across his stomach, spilling his intestines. Half of his face was a bloody mess, bits of skin completely missing. Martin stopped a foot away and gagged at the sight, cupping his mouth to mute his sickness and his aborted scream of horror.

"The restrooms are thataway, if you're going to be sick."

Martin screamed, scrambling back, nearly falling over himself. He watched as Douglas lifted his head,  _blinked_ , and said again, "You're very loud."

"D-Douglas?" Martin gasped. He checked Douglas' wounds again and yes, that's definitely his guts hanging out. "How... how are you still alive?"

"I think the real question is how do you know me?"

Douglas didn't sound like he was scared or in pain. He sounded annoyed, if anything. "Douglas, it's me! It's Martin!"

Douglas hummed. "Okay, sure," he said without familiarity.

"No, we work together! You and me at MJN! See?" Martin pointed to the stripes of his jacket. "See? I'm the captain and you're my first officer!"

Douglas pulled a face, the exposed muscles of his cheeks contracted. "I seriously doubted I ever worked with someone who sounds like a little boy."

Martin couldn't believe it. Douglas was strung up like a dead animal and he still found ways to insult Martin. "Douglas, what happened here? What is going on?"

"I-" Douglas paused, giving it thought. "I... don't remember. I've been here for so long, my memory is not like what it's used to be."

"Oh god..."

"Hey, hey, don't be like that. Why don't you make yourself useful and get me down from here?"

Douglas was hanging at least eight feet off the ground and Martin had to roam, looking for moveable chairs and boxy items to build a makeshift stool. He stood on it, grimacing at being so near Douglas' exposed organs. He tried his best to ignore them and focused on the ropes keeping Douglas bound.

The ropes were tightly wounded around Douglas' arms and they were thick. It was going to take some time to untie them. "So what do you remember?" Martin asked, grabbing the first rope and tugging at it.

"Not a lot," Douglas admitted. "Like I said, I've been here for so long, everything is fuzzy."

Martin grunted. "Am I the only one here? Is Arthur and Carolyn around?"

"I don't know who those two are. There... there've been a few I've seen wandering around here. Never in a group, always alone. People of various ages. They never want to talk."

"Do you know who did this to you?"

Douglas frowned. "I don't. All I know is, I deserved it."

"Deserve it?" Martin blanched, loosing the rope. The ropes around Douglas' arms began to unravel and he slipped through, falling to the ground. He made no to effort to catch himself and he laid sprawled on the ground.

"Douglas! Oh, Douglas, I'm so sorry!" Martin hopped off the boxes and kneeled down to Douglas prone body. "Are you okay? Are you..."

Martin paused, realizing dawning on him. "Douglas...?

Silently he turned Douglas over onto his back. Douglas' dead, cold eyes stared blankly up at him.

"God no..." Martin cringed, his voice breaking. "No... no, please, no..."

 

 

 

Eventually Martin pulled himself together long enough to take off his own jacket and draped it over Douglas' face. Martin wished he could do something better than leaving him here on the ground but knowing what this world had to offer, Martin couldn't afford to stick around any longer.

"Goodbye Douglas."

 

 

 

The outside world was no better than the airport. Everything was in different degrees of rot. Cars were either rusted beyond repair and the ones that looked promising were flipped over with the windows broken in.

The road itself looked like the victim of an earthquake. There were opened splits, raised portions of ground, and gaping holes so deep, Martin couldn't see the end of it. He kicked a rock into one of these holes and he never heard it hit the bottom.

He did find a bicycle. The tires were flat but the chain was still on and that was good enough. His first destination was Carolyn's house since it was closer than his own.

Half-way there Martin took a break, sitting on the side of the broken road and opened one of the bags of sweets. Inside, the contents were a fuzzy black mess and in disgust, Martin tossed the bag aside and opted for just drinking water.

Martin rode into Carolyn's neighborhood, and any hope he might have had of finding her or Arthur was tossed away. Some of the houses were burnt down, others had collapsed. Though Martin had yet to see any animals, there were large scratches on doors that had been forced in.

He pulled up to Carolyn's house and was relieved to find it standing. The paint was peeling and there was a gigantic hole in the roof, but it was there. Martin quietly laid down his bike and with a deep breath, walked up to the porch.

Carolyn's front door was unlocked. Martin knocked on it anyways, his knuckles pushing the door open on each knock. "Carolyn?" He said hesitantly into the empty house. "Arthur?"

Nobody answered him, not even the dog.

He entered cautiously. There was no carpet, no picture frames on the wall. Most of the furniture was gone, all that was left behind was a few broken pieces of table legs.

Martin licked his lips and quietly said, "Hello?"

 _Arthur answer him_. "Yes, hello, who's there?"

Martin nearly cried. He ran into the living room, wanting nothing to see Arthur's face and give him the world's biggest hug. He ran around the corner and came to a screeching halt.

In the living room, there was a chair Arthur loved to sit in. The chair had lions embroidered on the padding and Arthur said when he sat on it, he felt like a king. Despite the faded colours, Martin recognized the chair easily.

Arthur sat on the chair. Except his head was on his lap.

Startled, Martin fell back.

"Oh!" Said the head of Arthur. The bottom of his jaw kept brushing the fabric of his trousers when he spoke. "Are you okay?"

Martin turned away, his face crumbling. Tears ran down his face while Arthur kept repeating the same question, over and over.

Arthur's body sat in the chair in a relaxed position. His arms were on the arm rests, his feet planted firmly on the ground. His neck was not severed by a knife or any other sharp instrument. The wound was too bloody, too jagged to have been made by a cutting tool.

The blood from his neck stump stained his precious stewart uniform and all Martin could think of was the way Arthur would take so much time to iron his clothes. He was so proud to wear that outfit.

Arthur blinked worryingly at Martin. "Are you okay?" he asked again. "Please answer me."

"Arthur," Martin gasped. He could barely look at him. "Arthur... please tell me you know who I am."

Arthur made an apologetic face. "Sorry... it's been so long since I've someone."

This was a nightmare. Martin cupped his face and cried into his hands. He begged to himself, to wake up, wake up.  _Wake up._

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Arthur cooed. "My mum is upstairs. I'm sure if you go to her and ask very nicely, she'll fix you a cup of tea."

"Carolyn?" Was she going to be like Douglas and Arthur too? "I thought you said you haven't seen anybody around lately."

"Yeah, it's been a while since mum came downstairs. I'm sure she's fine, I can hear her moving around sometimes."

Martin glaced over to the stairs. He wasn't sure if he wanted to see Carolyn.

"Could you do me a favor before you go?" Arthur asked. "This is a terrible spot to be in. Can you move me to the window so I can look outside?"

The thought of handling a severed head made Martin feel sick again. But it was Arthur, and Martin wasn't going to refuse something as simple as a better view to his friend. "Alright," Martin said, wiping his face.

Gingerly, Martin picked up Arthur's head around the jaw, curling his fingers into Arthur's hair. He kept the head at a distance and scurried over to the window, positioning the head to look out.

Arthur's head was a bit lopsided but he stood up. "Thank you," he said happily, staring out. "Oh, this is lovely."

Lovely? The window looked out into the garden. There was nothing back there but dead grass and a fallen tree.

There was a creaking noise from above and Martin jumped. It was the first loud thing he heard all day. Maybe Carolyn was okay. Martin moved towards the stairs. "Thank you, Arthur," he said back to the head.

Arthur said nothing.

"Arthur?"

No response.

Martin didn't need to check. He knew, like Douglas, Arthur was not going to talk to him ever again. Martin thought about covering Arthur's face like Douglas, but Arthur wanted the view. And Martin was not going to deny him that.

The stairs groaned with every step and Martin feared his foot was going to break through at any moment. Thankfully the steps held his weight and it was a relief to get to the top.

He knew where Carolyn's bedroom was- he moved furniture for her once- and he wondered what hellish scene was going to greet him. This, all of this was leading him somewhere and though he was afraid, he had to see it through.

He pushed open Carolyn's bedroom door.

"Hello," Carolyn greeted him. "Who are you?"

She looked... normal. There were no wounds, no blood, and she was standing up on her own two feet. Martin couldn't believe it and he almost took a step forward, wanting to kiss her cheeks.

He halted when he noticed she was hiding something behind her back. She wasn't even being subtle about it. When Martin didn't respond to her question, Carolyn pulled out her arm, revealing the object she was holding.

It was a very large,  _very_  shiny butcher knife. "Who are you?" She asked again. She sounded irritated, not threatening despite the knife.

"It's Martin," he pleaded. "I work for you, remember? At Fitton airport with Douglas and Arthur-"

"I remember Martin," Carolyn said sharply. "He was sucked through one of Gerti's engines years ago, so you can't be him."

The sudden image of himself, causally walking in front of Gerti's large engine, being pulled in and coming out as red mist nearly sent Martin to his knees. He did his best to push the thought away.

"I'm just trying to find a way home," Martin begged. "Carolyn, I don't know what's going on, but you're my last hope. Please, help me."

Carolyn stepped forward. The knife was still in her hand but she didn't hold in a threatening manner. Martin didn't move, allowing her to come close enough to for her to cup his face.

"You shouldn't be here," she said. Her hand was cold against his face. "You are not  _ready_  to be here."

Martin blinked at her. "What do you mean?"

She grinned at him. Her arm shot forward and she buried the knife full hilt into Martin's stomach.

 

 

 

With a flash of white hot pain, Martin woke with a cough. He gasped, his arms flailing for purchase. One hand caught his wrist while Douglas' smooth voice tried to calm him. "Martin, Martin, I'm here. You're okay, you're okay, just breath. Okay? Breath for me."

Martin sucked in air desperately. "What-" His voice was scratchy and it was hard to make his tongue move. "What happened?"

"Don't move, don't talk."

"Douglas...  _what happened-"_

"You fell and hit your head," Douglas said. His skin was deathly pale. "Your heart stopped beating."

It was then Martin realized his shirt had been ripped opened and there were two distinct burn marks on his chest. To the side, he could see the defibrillator from the office, the one Douglas used to joke it was only there for decortation.

Arthur stood in the corner, cupping his mouth and crying silently.

"Carolyn is flagging down the ambulance. She'll be here in any minute."

"Douglas," Martin wheezed. It felt like his chest had a hole through it. "Please tell me you remember me."

Douglas rubbed at his eyes and gave a little uncomfortable giggle. He ran a hand through Martin's sweaty hair and said, "As if I can forget my dear old captain."

 

 

 

After two months of constant research, Martin knew he was never going to get an answer.

He didn't know what he saw. A vision, a hallucination, the afterlife? And every day that passed, little more details of the experience faded away. He thought about writing down the whole experience in a journal but he did not want to risk having Douglas, Arthur or Carolyn finding it.

They came over to his house every day to check up on him, worrying in their own way. Douglas made teasing comments, Arthur tried to make everything happier with very little luck, and Carolyn fussed and glared and complained about little things. Even long after Martin came back to work with a clean bill of health, they visited often.

Martin didn't dream any more. He didn't mind, his dreams were never that exciting to begin with, but it scared him a little. Something told him that  _that place_  was still out there, waiting for his return. If he forgot, it might come back to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Both the title and summary come from two wonderfully dark Ninja Turtles fics I read years ago.


End file.
